There was once an ad-free RSS aggregator at PFBlogs.com and it was a nice resource because it put a whole lot of feeds in once place. Blueprint’s feed was there too and I have no problem with someone republishing summaries of my feed as long as they don’t try to take advantage of me. One day, PFBlogs.com put on Google Ads and it bothered me because he was using my content (and the content of a lot of other bloggers) without permission (I was never asked whether I wanted it or not). I’ve asked him to remove the feed and he’s done so.

Well, there’s another ad-free alternative now located at PFBlogs.org that has a whole ton of feeds available for your consumption. It has no ads, it doesn’t take advantage of the wealth of knowledge personal finance bloggers provide, and it’s entirely free to use.

If you’re a blogger, check out PFBlogs.com to see if he’s republishing your content without your permission and making money from your work. If it bothers you, let him and know he’ll take it off.

If you’re not a blogger, check out PFBlogs.org and you might find a few new faces that you may enjoy reading.

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13 Responses to “PFBlogs.org – Ad-Free Aggregator”

Truly an original site (pfblogs.org). Some old phrase about imitation and flattery and all that comes to mind.

I will presume that you specifically listed bargaineering at phatinvestor.com yourself, as they are running ads on your content as well (and republishing a much larger portion than pfblogs.com was).

I would also suggest that anyone publishing a feed explicitly put some creative commons tags in their feeds to make it easier to tell. I did not originally check all feeds for this – I visually looked at many feeds, but feedburner (which *many* sites use) did not always put a little CC logo at the top. Also, some feeds were submitted to me directly and I simply added them. As you pointed out, you were removed, and anyone who wants to be removed will be removed.

Also, whoever is running pfblogs.org might want to double check using “A Penny Saved“‘s feed. That CC license says “No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.” which is what pfblogs.org seems to be doing. I’m presuming that you Jim at least have the ear of whoever is behind pfblogs.org.

pfblogs.org does not classify as a derivative work, just as Bloglines, Google Reader, and My Yahoo do not classify. I think we all know that derivative work is not the issue, the issues are fair use and appropriation for commercial intent.

Not sure how you can be so certain pfblogs.org is not a ‘derivative work’. Pfblogs.org’s use of some feeds is certainly falling under the explicit “You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work” prohibition.

Does feedster qualify as ‘fair use’? News.google.com? Both certainly has commercial intent, as do other search engines. I consider bloglines, google reader, my yahoo and others in one particular category, because they only show what was requested by the user – they are essentially applications directed by the user. news.google.com, pfblogs.com, phatinvestor.com, feedster and other search engines index large segments of information and make small portions of it available to end users as a service. ‘Commercial intent’ is does not necessarily rule out “fair use” of works. http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/ObjectID/C3E49F67-1AA3-4293-9312FE5C119B5806 has a bit more information.

News.google.com is apparently still running (although just out of ‘beta’ status recently) and hasn’t received *too* much flak yet, for doing essentially the same thing (quoting first few words of the larger article with a link directly to it). Are there ads directly on there? No, that doesn’t make google any less of a commercial endeavor nor does it mean they are not using those for commercial gain. No doubt they are tracking the clicks and using the feedback to help improve the quality of all searches, which they do with commercial intent. (Feedster has been respecting creative commons licensing for some time now, and that was an oversight on the pfblogs.com initial startup, and has been rectified (manually)).

mike – you are right, perhaps i need a creative commons tag in my feed but you were republishing excerpts of other people’s work, putting an advertisement next to it that the original writer earns sees none of, and you want to claim fair use?

From the nolo site: “The purpose and character of your intended use of the material involved is the single most important factor in determining whether a use is a fair use.” The purpose of republishing the feed was to aggregate them in one place and generate revenue through Google Ads, correct? The character? It was a straight excerpt.

I didn’t say anything disparaging about you mike, other than that you were taking advantage of my and other blogger’s work (which you were, but that’s not the same as saying you’re a thief or anything like that), and I did say that you were removing feeds of the folks who wanted you to. Please don’t think I’m out to get you.

Am I missing something here? In both sites, it seems like you are redirected to the original site to read more than a sentence or two of the post, unlike something like Bloglines where you can read the entire thing without actually visiting the site (& being exposed to its ads, etc), so the use of the content didn’t seem excessive to me.
And the advertising on pfblogs.com is much less intrusive than it is on most blogs, such as the original pfblog.com. Does pfblog.com pass on ad revenue to the blogs featured as “channels”?

pfblogs.com and pfblog.com aren’t affiliate at all. mm started the network sites on pfblog.com and the agreement was that the writers would receive a percentage of the google advertisement income in return for writing. As he sold more non-google ads, he increased that percentage to what I believe is 75%+ or so, I forget honestly.

pfblogs.com doesn’t give the people who provide the feeds anything at all. pfblogs.org is just pfblogs.com without advertisements. the “controversy” surrounds the fact that pfblogs.com just republishes the feeds and puts a google ad around it – making money from other’s work without adding much to it.

I was about to say that although I don’t know pfblog.com’s arrangement, given how things are placed, it would seem that those writing there are doing so under some sort of arrangement and probably receive payment of some sort.

Jim, I didn’t say you were out to get me. I’m not thinking that. I do think the pfblog.org thing is a bit strange, whoever is behind it, in that it’s a direct copy.

The purpose of pfblogs.com is to aggregate feeds – that provides value to me and to other people. The ads were intended to be a way to try to support the cost of doing that. I’ve pointed out other services ( notably news.google.com) which seem to do the same thing – aggregate information, present it in a useful way, and let visitors go read the entire article. I’m not seeing much of a fundamental difference besides size of operations between the two.

Your argument is still flawed — Google News doesn’t have ads alongside search results, or at all as far as I can see. If I’m wrong I’ll gladly admit it if you point me to a Google News search result with ads, but… I do not see ads. I searched news.google.com for “cell phones,” “ipods” and various other products that would normally bring up ads, but there were none. I image newspapers would cut off Google’s access to their RSS feeds if they had included ads, since newspapers make all of their money from selling their own advertising (very little from subscriptions).

You probably got more publicity out of these discussions than you would have without them, so you might as well be happy for the extra visitors. I hope you make some money in your endeavors throughout your life… just not with my content.

I don’t think Mike is a bad guy, this could have definitely gone for the worse. I asked him to take my feed down and he did. He claims he didn’t see it as wrong, and I believe him. If he didn’t have ads, I would have let him keep on using my feed since it satisfied my copyright decisions. Therefore, PFBlogs.org is still running it.

Putting aside copyright decisions for a bit, in the end the “service” of aggregating feeds isn’t really that hard. Thus, PFBlogs.org is willing to do it for free, with no ads.

I’m not going to use either, as I have my trusty RSS reader, but the fact is:

I own and operate and write A Penny Saved…, the blog that started this whole comment thread about CC and pfblogs.org’s usage of feeds. As I understand it, the non-derivitive means that you cannot use the feed to create your own content. I cannot use your feed and republish it with only minor changes and call it my own. I can however simply republish your feed like pfblogs.org has done as long as it is not a commercial endeavor(pfblogs.org is not), I do not alter said feed(pfblogs.org does not) and and links or redirection based upon the feed is attributed to the originator of the feed(pfblogs.org does this)

So, even though my blog content is under a non-commercial, non-derivitive, attribute license, pfblogs.org is completely withing rights to do what they are doing. I also happen to think that what they do is good and encourage it.

Pfblogs.com is another story. They would fail to meet the above listed criteria and I would demand that they stop using my feed.

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